Scott Morrison, Sophie Mirabella, and can someone please bring a monolith to the town square ...

In the end, the thing about politicians that's intensely dislikeable - politicians of any stripe - is their universal tendency to exaggerate, lie, dissemble and jawbone.

It goes with the turf of course - used car salesmen and women, all with ideological bees buzzing around in their noggins - but if you pay attention for any period of time, it becomes wearing.

I've always liked "to jawbone" as a concept, at least in the sense of "To try to influence or pressure through strong persuasion, especially to urge to comply voluntarily". (Of course it also means to talk socially without exchanging too much information, but that smacks of the kind of discourse indulged in by latte sippers, and thanks to the commentariat we know what that leads to - socialism, despair, and hair on the palms).

But after jawboning, there's haranguing and harassment, and then there's downright stupidity in perverse argumentation, and Scott Morrison is a prime example of political stupidity in action. The thing about attack dogs is that they become offensive even to those that are on the same side.

Here's Peter van Onselen in Opposition stoops to lies and excuses in race to the bottom on boatpeople:

Paul Bongiorno asked him (Morrison): "(Tony Abbott) described (boat arrivals) as an invasion: isn't that playing on people's fears?"

Morrison answered: "Tony did not say that; he said you were at risk of putting Australia in a situation where it is open."

"He said peaceful invasion," Bongiorno responded.

Morrison disagreed: "No, he didn't - he said, he didn't say, what he said was, is, that we were open to the prospect of that if you were to go down that path. Now he never actually used that phrase in the way that you've outlined it."

Well that sounds emphatic. So then van Onselen plays a cruel card:

Let's clear up any confusion by quoting word for word what Abbott did say when he gave an interview on ABC radio last Wednesday. "People understand that if anyone can just rock up to Australia and say 'I am here; you've got to keep me', that effectively the country is exposed to a form of peaceful invasion."

Yep, it's way beyond jawboning, it's fear mongering at its finest, with talk of surges, tsunamis and armadas, crude, vile gutter politics, and rightly van Onselen refuses to step into that pit.

Morrison has regularly turned up on The Punch, Australia's most jawboned ass of a conversation, his last outing in May under the header Debating population is not racist or bigoted, and his collected works are assembled under his byline here.

Each time after I've read one of his scribbles, I feel the need of shower, a cold one. There's so much heat, and so little sign of anything other than belligerence, that it's like being in the presence of an attack dog, and wondering when the beast might turn on innocent bystanders.

And if you want a similar experience by an attack doggess, Sophie Mirabella is eternally reliable. Her latest outing, Labor should have learned its lessons on messiahs, immediately brings to mind a Monty Python line about Tony Abbott ... he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Yep, that's the eye-glazing level of vacuity Mirabella induces in her ramblings. You can always recognise a spinner by the talk of media, and by the presence of spin:

Just as Kevin didn’t help our nation, Julia will not fundamentally fix the problems the Gill-Rudd Government created. She is a creature of the Labor party and has been an integral part of every poor decision that led to Rudd’s downfall.

Bugger me dead, former chairman Kevin not yet cold in the ground, and already it's the Gill-Rudd government. I suppose we must now talk of the Zhou Enlai-MaoZedong government, seeing as how Mao had so little to do with killing so many people.

But that's the way it goes in a Mirabella tract. The little bits of posturing that amount to meaningless thought bubbles. It's the kind of column that should be put into as few words as possible. How about "I hated Chairman Rudd, and now I hate Chairwoman Gillard, and vote for us."

There, done and dusted, and everybody can get on with their lives. Instead of reading this kind of factoid gibberish:

In fact they delivered almost the opposite of what the Australian public had been expecting. Or as our new PM (who was Acting PM for almost 20% of Rudd’s reign) put it, they “lost their way”. Hmmm…can’t have had a very good policy compass to have managed that in just 2 short years?

Yes, yes, we get the idea that you want to tar Gillard with the same brush as Rudd, but the acting PM line and the 20% figure is fatuous nonsense. You can't spend years portraying Rudd as an obnoxious control freak, and then do a 180 degree wheelie on a dime to contend Gillard was really the one doing it all. That's not jawboning, that's just silly.

Even worse, having run the messiah routine, Mirabella can't resist the Monty Python gag:

If Kevin’s meteoric fall taught Labor’s spin machine anything, it should be that raising expectations to messiah levels and delivering instead a Monty-pythonesque “naughty boy” is hardly the formula for long-term electoral success.

Uh huh. Did I mention eye-glazing levels of vacuity? How about another joke?

She’s “saved” Sydney’s western suburbs from over-crowding without a single policy to address population….unless you count adding the word “Sustainable” to a Minister’s title (BTW isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron when it applies to a Labor Minister?)

Oh slap my thigh with the jawbone of an ass. BTW here's an example of a real oxymoron: extremely average, same difference, pretty ugly, meaningful Mirabella.

Never mind, the important thing to understand is that the Liberal party and Tony Abbott haven't indulged in personality politics. But nonetheless you have to deploy terms like messiah so you can deplore your opponents indulgence in personality politics, in a way that might be construed as personality politics, except for your abhorrence of personality politics and spinning:

Labor’s spin machine is clearly in overdrive with it’s new female messiah offering the chance to “fix” the problems created by its former white-bread messiah.

It’s all about creating that “reliable, solid” vibe that was done so effectively with Kevin 07.

Never mind that your own sewing machine is spinning away at ever so fast a rate, like a CD stuck in a hard drive.

But this kind of rant wouldn't be replete without reference to the media, preferably paranoid, and wrapped in spin:

And just like in 07, there are so few in the mainstream media looking behind the spin and questioning the substance of what Julia Gillard is saying.

In fact, one of the major metropolitan dailies recently described Gillard’s “I don’t want a big Australia, but don’t ask what I’m going to do about it” statement as “when she announced she was putting the brakes on the nation’s population growth”. Hello, did I miss that “announcement”? Exactly how is she putting the brakes on it?? Has anyone bothered to ask?

Hello??? Did anybody tell Sophie that this kind of exclamatory writing is the sort of drivel you'd mark down a high school student for???? Hello, did anyone explain that this kind of rhetoric is profoundly unsatisfying and a useless debating trick that in the cold hard light of print looks like a playground argument??? Hello, did anybody explain that one question mark will do to end a sentence and not two??

And so on and on:

Julia Gillard will enjoy a honeymoon period. Labor’s spin machine knows this. As with the Kevin 07 campaign, we’re being presented with a caricature, a confected image, essentially a false bill of goods ...

...You only have to look at the substance of her recent “fixes” to see it’s all smoke and mirrors. Despite the carefully crafted image of a “second coming”, Labor is only offering more of the same behind a different mask and voice box.

Well here's the thing. People will judge Gillard and come to their own conclusions. But reading Mirabella, only one word comes to mind ... pitiful.

Oh okay I'll accept tragic, or inconsequential, or irrelevant, or vacuous, or mindless.

Someone should explain to attack dogs that there's more to policy life than lies, silly spin about messiahs and naughty boys and a reluctant mainstream media refusing to indulge in conspiracy theories ...

Would that be Chairman Rupert's media - say no more, and come on down Glenn Milne - or the Fairfax media which regularly features such luminaries as Gerard Henderson, Miranda the Devine and any passing ratbag from the Institute of Public Affairs?

Oh dear, it's only Monday. Steady, grit the teeth, march forward, and as Émile Coué de Châtaigneraie might say, Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux, which I'm afraid stripped of its exotic French intonations, has the more banal meaning Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.

Or put it this way. Every day that follows in this week, I won't have to read Sophie Mirabella, and as a result, in every way I'll be getting better and better.

Meanwhile, someone should quietly take Mirabella and Morrison aside and explain to them: not fear mongering, but policy, not mindless ranting with question marks, but substance.

But do they have it in them? Who knows, but somehow I'm reminded of 2001 again. Will the spark from the monolith land in the brain, or is the land too barren????

More to the point, I'm reminded of the crowd scene in Life of Brian. You know, where they act like sheep when told that they need to think for themselves.

Why am I reminded of Mirabella and Morrison trying to scare and herd the sheep??? BTW LOL:

Crowd: Brian! Brian! Show us the Messiah!
Mother: Now you listen here! He's not the Messiah! He's a
very naughty boy! Now go away!
Crowd: Who are you?
Mother: I'm his mother, that's who!
Crowd: Behold his mother! Behold his mother! Praise unto
thee, Mother of Brian! Blessed art thou! Hosianna! All
things to thee, now and always!
Mother: Ah, now don't think you can get around me like that!
He's not coming out, and that's my final word! Now, shove
off!
Crowd: No!
Mother: Did you hear what I said?
Crowd: Yes!
Mother: Oh, I see. Like that, is it?
Crowd: Yes!
Mother: Oh, oh, all right then, you can see him for one
minute, but not one second more! Do you understand?
Crowd: Yes...
Mother: Promise?
Crowd: Well...all right.
Mother: All right, here he is then. Come on, Brian, come and
talk to them.
Brian: But Mom...Judith...
Mother: Ah, leave that Welsh tart alone!
Brian: I don't really want to, mum...
Crowd: [Excstatic Greetings]
Brian: Good morning!
Crowd: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!
Brian: Oh, please, please, please, listen! I've got one or
two things to say.
Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to
follow me! You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to
think for
yourselves! You're all individuals!
Crowd: Yes, we're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
Crowd: Yes, we are all different!
Homogenous Man: I'm not.
Crowd: [Multiple Silencing Sounds]
Brian: You all got to work it out for yourselves!
Crowd: Yes, we've got to work it out for ourselves!
Brian: Exactly!
Crowd: Tell us more!
Brian: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what
to do! Otherwise...aooh! No!
Mother: That's enough! That's enough!
Crowd: Ooooh...that wasn't a minute!
Mother: Oh, yes, it was!
Crowd: Oh, no, it wasn't!
Mother: Now stop that, and go away!

Yes, yes. I'm an individual, I'll work it out for myself. Now stop it, and go away!!!